What can WoW do to gain Subs?

As the title suggest, what do you think Blizzard can do with WoW to gain more subs, and make up for the colossal drop in Subscribers? Will releasing more content, and reducing all the annoying things people complain about help? Or do you see Blizzard going F2P with WoW in the future. Which would for sure, inflate the Sub numbers.
What do you think is the best solution for Blizzards crisis with subscribers?

See, that's what I was thinking off also. But I know some games have restricted activity towards their F2P players, versus the monthly subscribers (SWTOR in mind). I think if Blizzard did it right, and for example restricted the gain of like VP and JP for the F2P players by a set percentage. Then add a micro transaction to buy 100 VP for like 1.99$, that would make somewhat of sence... I know, I would spend like 5$ sometimes to buy like 200 VP to avoid running those 2-3 extra heroics. They also could use many other micro transactions methods. I know 0.99$ or 1.99$ isn't a lot, but you do that once to 2 times a week, assuming you spend 3$ a week, they can easily make 12$ or more a month off you.

They should go with a more "safe" theme for the next expac, Burning Legion, maybe hype up something with getting to see Sargeras. Probably would get some people back... heck I'd try it, but probably not play long term due to lack of time now.

Where? If you mean in Asia, then yes, that's where most of the subs are dropping. NA/Europe are more or less stable, dropping and gaining some percentages here and there.

One thing has also changed heavily, there are fewer and fewer constantly subscribed players. More and more subscribe for a couple of months, drop off for a while and come back at a later time. This will obviously affect subnumbers, so the actual amount of players playing can be hard to determine fully.

Originally Posted by Rugz

Holes means you have less of a food to plate ratio, you can get more net weight of pancakes into the same volume and area as you could with waffles. Therefore pancakes win.

At this point in time I think the only way it is going to gain players is by going F2P.

Originally Posted by Pancaspe

WOW is fine as is.

China inflated the sub numbers, now that is going away.

The real core of this game is in North America and Europe.

Those numbers are stable.

Losing almost 20% of your customers in six months is far from fine. The game is not stable in NA and EU the earnings report stated "...the game saw declines of approximately 1.3 million subscribers, mainly from the East, but in the West as well.”

Allow the creation of instant max level chars already sitting on ur own stupid class the class that gets slapped around with the MEGA nerfbat is really not funny.
Hey im a shaman i was good once.. next expansion sucky... then half good, then sucky, then super good, then ruined.
shaman was just the first class i tought off.
U know im right uppin here

It'd have to drop a lot more than it has for there to be any real impact on what Blizzard does. Even if it dropped to something like 5 million, they wouldn't exactly be cutting any developers loose.

To get more subs, in general? More content that doesn't wear out quickly. The game currently has an issue with content becoming quickly irrelevant (normally in one or two patches) and this should change as much as possibly. Content like battlegrounds are eternal (they're never outdated by gear or levels), and perhaps they should look into PvE alternatives. Challenge mode gear scaling is a great start for this.

They should go with a more "safe" theme for the next expac, Burning Legion, maybe hype up something with getting to see Sargeras. Probably would get some people back... heck I'd try it, but probably not play long term due to lack of time now.

A Burning Legion themed Xpac would be awesome! I'm sure a lot of people that don't play the game anymore would come back for that expansion. As long as Blizzard doesn't screw up and make another Deathwing out of Sargeras.

Allow the creation of instant max level chars already sitting on ur own stupid class the class that gets slapped around with the MEGA nerfbat is really not funny.
Hey im a shaman i was good once.. next expansion sucky... then half good, then sucky, then super good, then ruined.
shaman was just the first class i tought off.
U know im right uppin here

Yeah, balance is an issue. If I'm playing a game like TF2, DotA 2, Starcraft 2 etc, if I find that my class/race/hero sucks at the moment, I can just jump onto another. WoW makes you invest a hell of a lot of time just to have an alternative to play on, and that's not even considering the gear it would need.

The game revolves around max level, and balance is far from perfect. They need to put some consideration into how this affects the player's experience and inability to just hop on over to another class.

I feel like the game is better than it has been in years so I'm not sure why it doesn't reflect that in sales. Aside from dailies being mandatory in 5.0 I though they did well this expansion. Especially considering how bad Cata was content wise.

I do hope that updated models will be something they can try to show off for the next expansion, that should at least bring back some people.

Probably little more than extend the glide path for as long as possible. The entire market for MMO's generally has been shrinking for some time. And with F2P competition out there that's getting better and better it's very difficult to see how they can make WoW actually grow again. I guess time will tell but what's going on has more to do with structural and business issues. Structural in that the game is, in gaming terms, ancient. Business in that their potential pool of subscribers gets smaller all the time and they are no longer attacting enough new players to fill in the gaps left by players leaving.

Practically everything else that people talk about is in some sense a solvable problem even if there are no solutions that will make everyone happy. Most of the above issues really aren't solvable over the long run. The game will continue to get older and it appears as if the MMO market--particularly the market to pay every month to play--will continue to shrink.

Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2013-05-13 at 08:03 AM.

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